So I went to Altovise Ewing’s talk on cancer genetic research, and I ended up having a few questions that I wanted to “outsource” to the class – just a few questions that made me suspicious of Ewing’s research as well as genetic research/testing as a whole. To begin with, I think we need to start in 1932 with the beginning of the Tuskegee syphilis study, a horrendously unethical study in which black men were subjugated as test animals even after a viable treatment, penicillin, was discovered. Even more than that, I think we also need to take note of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who had biomaterial removed from her body which was used in research for decades without her knowledge or that of her family. In light of these cases and countless others, we begin to see that the medical profession has continuously and inhumanely mistreated black folk. Moreover, this discrepancy is where Altovise started her research. When she began her career in cancer research, she quickly took note of the extreme absence of black folk in research studies. Afterward, she immediately began her own additional study to find out why black folk were absent in these kinds of research studies and how to get them more involved. She argued that black folk were “hurting themselves” because they were absent in these kinds of studies. By the simple fact that they were absent, they were removing their needs from the medical community. From then on, it would be more difficult to diagnose black folk and treat their genetic diseases such as a more lethal form of breast cancer that is found primarily in black women. Ultimately, Altovise found that black folk had a fundamental and historical (harking back to those examples in the beginning) distrust of the medical profession and were on the whole less likely to go to the doctor, participate in research studies, or give any kind of biospecimen to medical professionals. In the end, she stressed the point that if black folk did not begin to partake in more medical research that it would be detrimental to their own health and put them at a more unequal footing in contrast to white folk who already have better health care, more access to health professionals, and wider base for medical research already completed.
Now for the questions:
1. When Ewing began to speak on this divide between black and white medical research, I started to think back to scientific racism, this evil tool used to superiorize and inferioirize, and accordingly, is stressing this “difference” between black and white genetic research a good thing? Even more, is it problematic because she left out brown folk in her talk and her study?
2. Secondly, also in her talk she brought up that black men were far less likely to participate in medical research than black women. Why do you think that is? Is it because of this hyper-masculinized stereotyp of black men?
To answer your first question (part 2), the absence of brown people in these studies goes back to the black-white racial binary. The racial binary itself is problematic, but is heavily focused because the conflicting dichotomy can be seen throughout the United States, in the past and present. Racism has transformed in time and space--meaning that the racial minorities can differ within regions and throughout the timeline of history, in terms of 'other' races. These racial minorities can change via migration patterns. Within American history, white supremacy and the dehumanization of black folks are constant. To me, these constants are easiest to be widely understood and studied. It is problematic to exclude other cultures and people experiencing racism and prejudice in studies of racialized science. However, they can vary by regions and time frames, that it can minimize the study.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting point concerning African American's involvement in medical research and how the lack thereof affects the likelihood of detecting and treating diseases that affect the African American community - yet considering the current economic discrimination present in America, I wonder just how accessible these kind of studies are to the majority of African Americans who could participate. In addition to this, the health of impoverished Black communities is affected most by very preventable diseases. Think: when you spend your entire life living in a food desert of course the likelihood of developing a condition like diabetes is higher
ReplyDelete